Navigating Toxic Positivity

what happened with Concord was a disaster and it could have been avoided if they had had a healthy Studio culture everyone on a team can and should be able to give feedback and improve the game every person should feel accountability to their teammates giving and receiving feedback is critical and it takes bravery I call this leading from where you stand it takes courage to give feedback and it's risky but if you don't speak out you can end up with a failure so how do you navigate the situation in the most optimal way let's discuss a

Community member I Amic 9 who worked on this is Vegas asked the following do you have any recommendations for how an individual contributor or even a group of ic's could raise issues like the ones you talk about here in a way that can affect change from the bottom up I feel like these problems are often political in cause or solution and even talking about them can feel like a risk to your position or even your continued employment is it just time to find a new job or is there a better way thank you for the

question and yes there is a better way to start you need to know what culture you're working in this takes observation because it doesn't matter what your leader says the culture is all that matters is their action action will show you the truth of how the studio operates tie it with hot sauce you'll like it trust me no no no do not trust him who where's this coming from with Concord for example there were reports of toxic positivity that shut down negative feedback on the game but if you look at their website that isn't what

they said their culture was they were actively looking to add passionate Visionary creators who thrive in environments where the status quo just won't do and who genuinely want to be part of a collaborative inclusive and respectful team sadly you see this in companies a lot where they don't really know what their culture is anymore they have their aspirations of what they want it to be but that isn't what it really is for example when Oculus was acquired by Facebook they known as the move fast break things culture I loved that idea but at the point

we were acquired that just wasn't who they were anymore and you could tell it bothered them I remember when we would meet with Mark Zuckerberg he would always be pushing us to move faster so you need to know what the culture actually is you also need to know yourself can you afford to give feedback if something goes wrong are you going to be okay are you having a baby right now under a lot of stress maybe you don't have any money saved you have to always consider the possibility that people won't react well to the

feedback and you have to think about what you'll do if that occurs you also need to know how well you fit into the studio are you valuable to them what is your grief to Talent ratio think about someone like John carac he readily gives feedback because he knows he can go work anywhere if things don't work out or if people don't want to listen to him this is true of many people but most game developers don't think this way for example if you the only multiplayer coder working on Concord you're pretty safe to give feedback

if you're comfortable that you can survive giving the feedback then think about the issue that you're bringing up is it important in the case of this is Vegas there was no playable build this was a serious issue you can't iterate quickly if you can't see how the changes you're making impact the game but there are a lot of issues that aren't worth fighting games are in a constant state of being broken lots of bugs and issues never get fixed if you bring up every little thing people will stop listening I've worked with many enthusiastic game

developers and even though their hearts are in the right place if they bring up issues constantly they just get tuned out it's just what happens let the little things go and also try to remember to point out the successes too when things are going well on the game make sure you tell the team not only does it improve their morale it'll improve yours and it also makes it easier when you have to bring a little more critical feedback to the table so you've got your feedback you're ready to go you know the culture you think

you're going to surv surv now what do you do well you gather feedback I like to call it the walkin talk this is where you walk around you talk to the entire team and you see if there's support for this idea but before you even do that you need to start with the premise in your mind that maybe you're wrong when XNA started I walked around to the game teams and laid out the case for why I thought a shared game engine was a good idea even though I believed in XNA I didn't know it

was the right thing I hadn't really written a game engine I didn't have the kind of experience the Halo Engineers did writing game engines I wanted to hear their feedback I wanted to know what the issues would be if you're new to game development or you've just joined a team it's very possible you are wrong maybe the feature you think is missing has already been considered maybe the team working on the feature already has a plan for implementing it that you don't know about by keeping in mind you may be wrong you'll be more likely

to listen and learn you'll grow from the experience and you'll become a better communicator and a better game developer you may also find a better solution which brings me to my final Point start with the problem but have Solutions in your back pocket this is how the idea for Microsoft's internet gaming Zone was born Microsoft wanted a place on the internet where people could play their games and my group called net games was going to work on it essentially they wanted matchmaking for golf monster truck Age of Empires every single game you can think of

that would have an internet component they wanted a place for people to find each other so we started building it and at the same time we acquired a company that could help called electric gravity a spot for playing games using the internet igz features classic games such as Bridge chess and checkers for context I just moved out of testing and was a producer on the bridge game so I was asked to help onboard the electric gravity team as I started to understand the problem space I realized that there was zero chance that the team working

on the first solution was going to hit their dates for holiday so even though I was new I started talking to people people and pointing out the issues and during all of this I had a crazy idea a hack let's turn the card tables on the internet gaming Zone into tables where you could matchmake monster truck Madness and golf it was a hack but it would work so the idea started gaining momentum and soon one of the key leaders in the group took the idea on their shoulders and started emailing it to everyone the title

of the email was Laura's wonderful idea this was the best case scenario suddenly the entire team including leadership had taken the idea onto their shoulders and were walking it around and trying to get traction and it worked this is what you want you want other team members and leaders to carry the idea I wish I could say that we just rode off into the sunset and it was super successful uh but no it was actually really a mixed bag this project code named FastTrack ended up being exceedingly difficult our team had to Pivot from games

to infrastructure and ship it in 8 weeks despite this we powered through and shipped three releases of the Zone in a 3-month period eventually Gamers found our site loved it and the internet gaming Zone was the biggest gaming site on the internet until of course Microsoft abandoned it to pursue Xbox and live the other team had their project shut down they never shipped but luckily games was still growing so they all landed other positions at Microsoft I found this note sent to me from Steve who who ran the net games group back in the day

you know the guy who set the culture here's what he had to say Laura great work getting this Milestone out the door you dealt with a lot of issues from personality conflicts to an acquisition to Vision conflicts and you kept your eye on the end result forged consensus and kept people informed but Z1 is up and on time it was all essentially your idea in the first place Laura's wonderful idea remember that mail Steve eventually left the company and founded many suc successful startups this isn't a surprise because he knew how to listen to the

team but I didn't know that when I started giving feedback I hoped but you never really know until you actually do it that's why I recommend this approach you need to be confident that you'll survive the experience you need to focus on critical issues and most importantly leave the possibility that you could be wrong when you start taking these important issues and walking them around this gives you an open mind mind and as you talk to your team even if you're right about the problem I guarantee you're going to learn something and isn't that why

we're here Weeks Later Microsoft's recently purchased internet gaming Zone hit several Milestones when the main membership figures come out a record 275,000 members have signed up to play over the free gaming site and more than 1 million game sessions were initiated during May now these figures make the site one of the largest gaming communities on the internet